Sometimes it takes me a while to find things. This time I had help. On September 28, The Boston Globe ran an article by Jeff Jacoby on the current financial crisis. (You may have to register if you follow the link, but it is free).
Barney Frank was very quick to blame the Republicans for this mess and to misquote Ronald Reagan in the process. In fact, the roots of the crisis go back to Jimmy Carter. When you apply pressure on banks to issue loans to people who cannot afford them (earning money for the banks that sell the mortgage paper, the mortgage brokers, the lawyers doing the closings, and the real estate agents), you set up a situation that has to eventually fail. There will be people (both principled and unprincipled) who will make money in the short term, but it's a bubble waiting to burst. If you add to that the ability to mix good mortgage paper and bad mortgage paper in commodities without anyone knowing which is which, you have the recipe for a mega disaster. The private sector did not give us this--the article shows the real culprit.
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